The National Movement for Stability and Progress Party (NMSP) of the former Bulgarian Tsar and Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg has submitted Friday a proposal for changes in the electoral provisions of Bulgaria's Constitution.

The amendments would mandate the Bulgarian President to merge the two upcoming elections - for the Bulgarian Parliament, and for the European Parliament (EP). A total of 71 MPs have signed the amendments proposal so far.

The party fixed a one-month period for the other political parties to decide if they want to back the proposal as well. The NMSP has also announced it was going to start collecting signatures in support of the amendment.

The centrist party's representative Ognyan Gerdzhikov has recently stated that the President already had the right to call two votes in one day, but his party's proposal would mandate him to do so.

"We are not so rich to become the only European country to be able to afford the double expense," Gerdzhikov said.

Many Members of the Parliament commented later that the chance to adopt the proposed changes was very slim with the argument that the parties with the most MPs - the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms were against the merging of the elections.

The amendments proposed by NMSP also include termination of the mandate of an MP if she or he is sentenced to time behind bars for a committed crime. MPs would further loose their mandate if they leave or become dismissed from the Parliamentary group of the party with whose ballot they were elected. The changes need 160 votes in order to pass.